Medicine Inventory Management System

The Provincial Health Department endeavors to ensure the provision of affordable health care services to the general public on equitable basis. These services range from preventive, curative and rehabilitative aspects of health care. With thousands of health care facilities across the province, department ensures the availability of essential drugs allocated to each of them on the basis of trends and pre-determined criteria. Department of Health is also responsible for availability of qualified staff at every health facility, and prevention of pendemic and epidemic diseases through vaccination campaigns is ensured by the department.

Apart from 17 territory Hospitals, the Health Department has 115 secondary health facilities and about 3,500 primary health care facilities, dispensaries and clinics. Primary health care facilities treat around 23,000 non-surgical cites every day. The Punjab Health Department caters to health needs of a population of 92 million. Punjab Health Department provides free medicines worth over 6 billion PKR to patients treated for all of the above mentioned facilities.

Distribution and utilization of medicines in Government Health institutions and facilities is a complex procedure, involving a number of functionaries at various levels. Monitoring and controlling the flow of medicines in such an environment is a challenging job.

IT Initiative

Medicine Inventory System was launched on 23 June 2015 under the umbrella of “Chief Minister-Punjab’s Health Reforms Roadmap Programme for Secondary Healthcare”. It is a centralized electronic system devised to maintain comprehensive stock information for medicines across all District Headquarters (DHQs) and Tehsil Headquarters (THQs) level hospitals within 36 districts of Punjab.

Medicine Inventory Management System is designed to ensure effective management and monitoring of requisition, allocation, disbursement, receipt and consumption in health facilities across the process. In addition it provides comprehensive reports on medicine consumption patterns and regular updates on expired/ out of stock medicines; this system allows key stakeholders of the department to manage medicine requisitions and allocation to facilities in district.

Project Highlights

  • Online creation, editing and approval of medicine requisitions and purchase orders.
  • Real-time management of inventory of medicines in facilities across Punjab.
  • Allocation and management of medicines through the system with regular updates on consumption at facilities.
  • Comprehensive reports to assist in efficient management and decision-making.
  • Automated alerts to keep the concerned officials apprised of the stock status and other exigencies.

Current Standing

The system is available in ready state; stakeholders involved are finalizing the implementation strategy.

  • User acceptance test completed
  • Training to all EDO’s completed

Tracking Medicine Inventory through Automated System